Disappointing Daffodils?

Tuesday April 19, 2011

Cathy wrote me to ask about something she'd recently been old about daffodils: I just heard a comment on daffodils. Do they only produce so many flowers in a life time? I do have some that are just the greens. Is this true? I just love daffodils and I would hate to know that I will only get so many years from them."
One of the reasons so many of us plant daffodils is that they seem to last forever. According to the American Daffodil Society, "Under good growing conditions, they should outlast any of us. While some kinds of bulbs tend to dwindle and die out, daffodils should increase."
You'll often stumble over sweeps of daffodils in old fields, the last remnants, along with overgrown lilacs, of an old homestead. While the initial bulbs may give out, they should have produced many new bulbs over the course of their lifetime to keep the area in bloom. However there is a condition called "going blind", where the daffodil plants will come up, but no flower buds form. There are a handful of reasons for this, mostly to do with growing conditions, and they all can be corrected. If your daffodils were disappointing this year, check out these remedies, before you give up on daffodils.